>I am self trained in Free Software and > Open Source products. So am I. I knew nothing about Linux other than that it was some weird operating system until I was done with my schooling (BYU CS program).
That is the nature of the beast. To succeed you have to be self-trainable because you will see a new type of challenge on a daily basis, and you will have to do some on the spot learning to solve it. If you are struggling with open source products, I think it is a mistake to attribute the difficulties to the lack of schooling in the area. Instead, I would look into something deeper, possibly of a learning habit/psychological nature. How comfortable are you when thrown into the midst of a new problem and being told to figure it out? If you are not, then I would focus on developing the confidence that with the help of man, README/docs, Google, logs, gdb, strace, pstack, snort/tcpdump/ethreal and other friends you will be able to figure it out even initially you seem to have hopelessly no clue. You also need a little bit of "what the heck" quality that permits you to reason in an unstructured environment full of surprises in such a way that when you see a surprise you get excited and shout for joy even if (or maybe especially if) the surprise is something most people would consider unpleasant such as a coredump, kernel panic, compiler error, deleted file, trashed disk, bad RAM, or fried motherboard. I do agree, though, that people are important and should be nurtured rather than treated as a disposable asset. -- Sasha Pachev AskSasha Linux Consulting http://asksasha.com Fast Running Blog. http://fastrunningblog.com Run. Blog. Improve. Repeat. /* PLUG: http://plug.org, #utah on irc.freenode.net Unsubscribe: http://plug.org/mailman/options/plug Don't fear the penguin. */
